Corruption has increasingly been framed as a national security priority in United States policy. This is perhaps most readily apparent in the National Security Council’s 2023 U.S. Strategy on Countering Corruption, but it is also manifest in several major pieces of legislation. One such legislative initiative is the 2019 Global Fragility Act (GFA), which tasked the State Department, Department of Defense (DoD), and US Agency for International Development (USAID) with developing a coordinated ten-year strategy for preventing conflict in fragile states. This past March, the State Department published its inaugural Strategy for Preventing Conflict in four pilot countries—Libya, Mozambique, Haiti, and Papua New Guinea—and one region, Coastal West Africa (encompassing Guinea, Cote D’Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, and Benin). Each of these strategy documents center anticorruption reform as a means to improve state legitimacy and reduce the risk of conflict, but they take quite different approaches to addressing the problem of corruption within a national security framework.

• In Haiti, the strategy document identifies corruption at border crossings as a critical enabler of arms trafficking, which in turn fuels gang violence and instability. This framing proposes anticorruption initiatives focused on rooting out corruption among agents working in “key transportation and economic hubs,” particularly ports and border crossings. Targeted anticorruption programs are paired with broader “support, equipment, and training to the Haitian Coast Guard” from the US Coast Guard and Department of Defense. By leveraging anticorruption programs to reduce arms trafficking, the strategy aims to address one of the key enablers of Haiti’s deteriorating security situation.
• Similarly, in Mozambique, the security lens has resulted in increased funding for anticorruption programs that target law enforcement and border security. The strategy explicitly identifies corruption as enabling terrorist operations, noting how “criminal syndicates operate with relative ease by taking advantage of the long, largely unpatrolled coastline, and porous land borders” and how “[t]rafficking schemes regularized routes to bring [in] weapons, funds, and fighters for ISIS-M.” At the same time, the strategy acknowledges broader issues in administrative corruption and outlines programs to strengthen prosecutorial capacity for corruption cases and to improve transparency in natural resource management.
• By comparison, the Libya strategy’s incorporation of anticorruption may be more rhetorical than substantive. The strategy acknowledges Libya suffers from extremely high levels of corruption, and lists “mitigating corruption” among its four primary objectives, but the strategy remains light on details. It gestures broadly toward strengthening multilateral cooperation and the need for continuous monitoring, evaluation, and learning, but does not outline any specific actions to build state capacity. This vagueness may be intended to retain flexibility across a ten-year period, or it may be a necessary accommodation of political sensitivities. Still, especially when compared to the level of detail in the Mozambique and Haiti plans, the Libya plan’s broad and non-specific treatment of anticorruption raises concerns that the strategy will not result in any concrete action to tackle this serious problem.
• Finally, the Papua New Guinea strategy acknowledges that “structural, economic, and budgetary inefficiencies, combined with opaque legal frameworks, create opportunities for corruption,” and focuses on the need to strengthen the ability of law enforcement and the justice sector to investigate corruption and financial crimes, as well as the need to improve transparency in public resource management. However, like the Libya strategy, the Papua New Guinea strategy provides little specific discussion of mechanisms for implementation, instead making broad references to training and capacity building.

In sum: The GFA strategies for Papua New Guinea and Libya discuss anticorruption in relatively broad terms, with emphasis on how administrative corruption can undermine state legitimacy, while the Haiti and Mozambique strategies outline anticorruption programs that are specifically tailored to address border security systems, with the aim of decreasing arms trafficking and thereby reducing violence. While all forms of corruption are important, and the Libya and Papua New Guinea strategies are not wrong in what they say about the general threats that corruption can pose, the more targeted, tailored approach exemplified by the Haiti and Mozambique strategies is more appropriate and effective for GFA strategy documents.

For one thing, the success of whole-of-government initiatives like the GFA often hinges on how narrowly defined the task is. Well-defined objectives clarify responsibilities and improve coordination, while ambiguous goals bring agencies together without clear roles, inviting bureaucracy and inefficiency (see here). If the GFA sets its target as broadly addressing administrative corruption and bolstering state legitimacy, it does not provide sufficient guidance regarding where to target anticorruption programming and how to measure improvements in governance. By contrast, the Haiti and Mozambique strategies present ready answers to these questions – holding local law enforcement agencies accountable for decreases in arms trafficking.

A targeted approach would also maximize the impact of the GFA’s $200M annual budget, which must support conflict-prevention initiatives across nine countries. As previous U.S.-led efforts at improving governance have shown, broad mandates often disperse funding and result in minimal lasting effects. By contrast, hyper-specific programs have been able to achieve dramatic results with substantially less funding (see here). By concentrating efforts on reducing corruption in fragile states’ border security agencies, the GFA stands a better chance at producing a demonstrable effect in the short-term, and building momentum for expanded funding in future years

Indeed, the targeted approach exemplified by Haiti and Mozambique may also prove more sustainable. Anticorruption was far from a priority during Trump’s first term, and his administration seems unlikely to support institutionalist approaches focused on reducing corruption generally. It is at least plausible that initiatives focused on counterterrorism and border security could achieve lasting bipartisan support.